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ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 



An address 



ANDREW S. DRAPER LL.B. LL.D. 
Commissioner of Education of the State of New York 



44th University Convocation 



State of New York 



In the Senate Chamber, Capitol, Albany, N. Y. 
Friday morning, October 26, 1906 



D388m-06-sooo (7-528 






V\- 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 
Mr Chancellor and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

No other State gives anything like the amount of money that New 
York State gives to the upbuilding of secondary schools. Our people 
give $65,000,000 each year for education and $7,850,000 for the 
annual maintenance of our 800 schools of secondary grade. But that 
is not what is now in mind. Reference is now made to the funds 
distributed by the State government to encourage the scholarship in 
and the expansion of the high schools and academies. The State 
began the policy even before she began to appropriate State school 
moneys for the elementary schools. She has maintained the policy 
with uniform sagacity and steadily enlarging generosity. The State 
support of the academic schools is more liberal than the State support 
of the elementary schools. The schools of approved academic stand- 
ing receive academic funds in liberal addition to the distributive share 
which they get as common schools from the State school funds. 
This is right because they are much more expensive and because 
the elementary school system and all of the educational interests of 
the State are very dependent upon them. The special fund given by 
the State government for promoting the excellence of these ad- 
vanced schools, which have come to be the vital connecting link 
between the elementary schools and the colleges and universities. 
and which have come to be the scarcely less vital link between the 
elementary schools and real success in our complex intellectual and 
industrial activities, is more than a half million dollars annually. 
This has been going on a long time and I make free to say that I 
think it should have been more uniformly effective than it has. 

The precise basis upon which this fund is allotted is left to the 
sound judgment of the Board of Regents. It goes without saying 
that it must be given in recognition and encouragement of 
scholarship. This has not always been as easy as the inexperienced 
may suppose. When the academic schools were few, before and 
for some time following the development of the public high schools, 
and when the appropriations were not large, the academic funds 
were apportioned upon the educational pedigrees of the teachers, the 
studies taught, the architecture of the schoolhouse, and the general 
reputation of the school. It seemed the only way. Then it was dis- 
covered that a better way for finding out about the work of a school 
is to examine the students. The teachers were not examined as the 



4 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

teachers in the elementary schools were ; there has been no special 
certificate for high school teachers ; and it is the truth that they have 
often shown less altitudinal competency for their work than the 
teachers of the elementary schools have for theirs- And up to the 
later eighties there were no means by which the Regents could even 
partially inspect the secondary schools. 

This developed a system of academic examinations which for 
many years, except for two or three brief periods, has been the 
basis of distribution of academic funds. This examinations system 
is quite exceptional in our country. So are the State academic ap- 
propriations. Both distinguish our State. There are some who 
seem frightened by the fact that other states do not do as we do. 
I am not one of them. There is no other State that is as great 
as New York, either in educational experience, authority, or re- 
sources. We will base out judgments upon our own situations and 
act upon what we think. 

For many years prior to 1900 the funds were apportioned accord- 
ing to the number of pupils who passed the examinations and, for 
reasons which are well known and need not here be discussed, the 
examinations were steadily extended, enlarged, intensified and com- 
plicated. The trend of the examinations system led to pedagogic 
abuses, and doubtless to something worse at times, in order to 
enlarge a school's share in the funds. There were those who would 
lather trust to the report of an academic inspector than to the 
answers which their students would make to the examination ques- 
tions. In the meantime, inspectors had multiplied and the inspect- 
ing system had grown. 

Accordingly, it was determined in 1900 to distribute the funds in 
proportion to the attendance at each school of academic pupils, 
Avithout reference to their passing examinations, when the University 
inspectors reported that the admission requirements of the school 
were equivalent to those required for the preliminary certificate. 
This relieved schools from the necessity of submitting their students 
to examination in order to share in the funds. It is true that the 
examinations have continued to be used in nearly or quite all schools 
using them before. The number of schools using them has enlarged 
notwithstanding the abolition of the requirement. That evidences 
the common estimate of their value. In some formerly using the 
examinations it has led to only partial use, to jugglery, and to other 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 5 

abuses ; and some schools which never used the examinations have 
come to share in the fund without the State having any very exact 
knowledge of their work. 

History has only repeated itself. Two or three times in the un- 
folding of our academic history the Regents relaxed the requirement 
that schools must submit to the examinations in order to share in the 
funds, only to meet with disagreeable but stern facts which soon 
convinced them that they must go back to it again if they would 
protect their funds and realize their expectations. A careful inquiry 
which has been in progress since our educational reorganization 
brought the officers of the Education Department and the Regents 
in April last to feel that it was necessary to return to the require- 
ment that all schools claiming a share in the funds must use the 
examinations. This has stirred some circumscribed but 
fervid remarks. In one or two instances these have gone 
the length of opposing all examinations on the ground that they are 
narrowing, dwarfing, misleading, mechanical, uninspirational, juice- 
less, and about everything else bad in education that the excessively 
pedagogical and the prematurely over-spiritual are able to think of. 

Of course we must have freedom in the schools, but before that the 
schools must have the elements which need and can exercise free- 
dom. Of course the imagination must be developed in education, 
but imagination which does not connect with earth claims re- 
straint, or leads to madness. Of course spirituality must have its 
free opportunity in the schools, but there are a good many 
of us who think that the honest capacity to do things in this world 
must be the vital basis of the spirituality which will be of the most 
worth in Heaven. Schools on earth must, in the first instance at all 
events, reckon with the things of earth. 

There is nothing so sacred about a system of examinations as to 
forbid its being discussed, criticized, condemned, modified or aban- 
doned if sense has the right of way and reasons are convincing. It 
has been apparent to me for many years that our State educational 
interests would be promoted by the fresh discussion of and some 
decisive changes in our examinations system. The action taken in 
April and amplified in June, to which some exception has been taken, 
resulted from much fresh consideration of the matter by the officers 
of the Department and the Board of Regents. It was not at all 
impulsive. The advisability of what was done is not doubted and 
the reasons for it are not wanting. 



NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

If it is a matter of any interest, it may be said that my personal 
feelings concerning the Regents examinations were expressed in the 
Board of Regents twenty years ago when I said, " I believe in these 
examinations heartily. So long as they express the best teaching 
they are all right. They contain the elements of educational uplift. 

1 oppose multiplying, extending and intensifying them. If that 
course is persisted in they will break down because they ought to. 
A good thing may be worked to death." My view is the same now 
as then, although my official relations with the Board of Regents 
have materially changed. Since our present relations were estab- 
lished my influence has been for simplifying the examinations, for 
reducing the number of the examinations, for reducing the length 
of the question papers, for avoiding so far as possible any hurtful 
consequences which may be merely incident to them, for making 
them representative of the best teaching, and not only responsive 
but helpful to the best progress in education. But I am not ignorant 
of the educational value of good examinations, nor of the need of 
examining students to find out about schools, nor of the desirability 
of recurring tests and permanent and continuing records to bring 
schools up and keep them up to their best. The value of proper 
examinations is no longer open to discussion in education. I think 
we can make as good examinations in New York as any other 
people can make, and that we can make such examinations both the 
aid and test of good work, without subjecting ourselves to the hurts 
which obtuseness in mutiplying, extending and intensifying the ex- 
aminations may bring upon us. I see no reason why State appro- 
priations should not be allotted on the basis of good work, judged 
by all of the best tests, nor why the State's tests should not be 
applied alike to all who desire to share in the State's gifts to good 
scholarship. In all of this the Board of Regents and the Commis- 
sioner of Education are in entire accord. 

The Education Department makes an academic syllabus each 
five years for the general guidance of the academic schools. It re- 
quires no self-assurance to say in this presence that the syllabus is 
of inestimable value to academic schools. Practically all of our 800 
schools of academic grade are greatly advantaged by it. They 
are not afflicted by it. They welcome it. They feel that it is 
theirs; that they make it; that it is the joint product of the 
best thinking of leading academic teachers and the Department 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 7 

officials and is better than any one person or any one school could 
prepare. It is in use in a hundred cities outside of the State. 

This syllabus not only guides and inspires the teaching in the 
secondary schools, but it becomes the basis and limits the scope of the 
academic examinations. These examinations, held semiannually, 
are the State's tests of the work of the schools, and the stand- 
ings which pupils gain in them have recognized educational value 
for teachers certificates, for admission to advanced schools and to 
examinations leading to the learned professions. They ought to be 
and perhaps may be accepted as scholarship tests for admission to 
the State civil service, and to the county and municipal civil service 
throughout the State. The certificates have educational values com- 
monly understood in the State and widely recognized throughout the 
country. 

But the wState does not say that any school must follow this 
syllabus or take these examinations. It does not distribute money 
on the basis of success in the examinations. It does not punisli 
any student for failure. It does say that any school which claims 
the State's money must submit to the State's tests. And it does 
say that the higher educational standards and requirements for 
which it assumes responsibility must be completely met in some 
definite and exact manner for which it is able to vouch. 

Of course there are excellent people who assert their opposition 
to all examinations beyond those of the class teacher — which are 
not examinations at all as we understand the term. These good 
friends grow radiant about mental reach, resourcefulness and grasp, 
about liberty in teaching, about spiritual expansion and the un- 
folding of the soul. They are rather interesting enthusiasts, if it is 
after dinner, and one has nothing else to do, and spontaneous humor 
runs low, and it isn't time to go home. But we all have our limi- 
tations, and the truth is that one who is so ebullient on that kind of 
thing must of necessity be wanting in perspective, in the sense and 
the strength and the adapting that are necessary to do real work 
in a real world, in the knowledge and the procedure which make 
for uniform efficiency in a system of schools. 

The sustained effort and the substantial accomplishments of the 
world have come from men and women who have been trained to 
see some things clearly rather than all things faintly, and to do defi- 
nite tasks as well as speculate about diversified industries. Out of 



8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

this, training and this exactness and the effort incident thereto, 
there come the fiber and texture and apphcation and endurance 
which make sure of accompHshing things even though things are 
hard. 

The really competent have no fear of fair examinations. The 
ability to pass set examinations ■ within the scope of the work pre- 
tended to have been done is a fundamental factor in educational 
competency- Any student who is sixteen years of age, half way 
through the secondary schools, and can not tell what he knows of 
a subject which he has covered, and tell it in a reasonable form in 
a rational examination limited by the scope of his term's work, and 
set by others than his teachers, has been badly trained. He has 
been wasting his time and doubtless some teachers have been unwit- 
tingly consenting to it. If he has to go to work, the ability to pass 
an examination is an acquisition exceedingly, desirable ; if he is to 
go to college or to a professional or technical school, it is vital. 
If he can not begin to do it by the time he is half way through 
high school, there is little prospect that he will ever do it. If he can 
never do it he will be at least a partial and very likely a complete 
failure. 

We are going to continue the inspections, but at the best they can 
be only occasional. With a self-satisfied or antagonistic principal 
•it is almost impossible for them to accomplish much. Under any 
circumstances they are often easy-going, meaningless and without 
much result. They can not be like a sheriff's search or a legislative 
investigation of an insurance company. They have to be accompa- 
nied with much caution, and a great deal of politeness, and perhaps 
some conviviality of a scholarly kind. We are trying to make them 
wiser and firmer and kindlier and more potential, and to accomplish 
it we are going to check up on the inspector by ascertaining whether 
what he has been saying and doing about the school is evidenced by 
the work of the pupils. 

We shall continue to read courses of study, continue to see how 
many teachers in a secondary school have done any work above 
what they are teaching, continue to regard pedigree and general 
i;epute,and even to listen to the philosophy of pedagogical emotional- 
ists. We will talk about all this with as little prevarication as possi- 
ble and all of the politeness we have. But when a New York State 
■secondary school claims a right to share in an appropriation made 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 9 

to build np secondary schools we are going to see what the upper 
class students of that school can do in our examinations, so as to 
know by the best tests known to educational experience what kind of 
work that school is really doing. We are not going to pay money 
in proportion to the number of students whp pass ; we are not going 
to drive students to suicide by forcing such as are on the verge of 
collapse into an examination ; we are not going to hang all hope 
for this world and the next upon passing a single examination ; we 
are not going to set any more irrational examinations than we can 
prevent; we are not even going to withdraw appropriations because 
a considerable percentage of students do not pass. We are going to 
test the work of the school and when the test shows weak or worth- 
less work we are going to help the authorities of that school to make 
it better, if they will let us and if there is enough fiber in the man- 
agement to build upon ; but if they will not let us. or if there is 
nothing to build upon, we are going to remember our responsibility 
to the State and the community most interested and tell the con- 
stituency of that school that there is something the matter with it, 
and what it is. 

The tests shall be uniformly applied. There shall be no evasion 
and no favoritism. Sharing in the State's bounty, definitely in- 
tended to be an encouragement to sound scholarship in advanced 
schools, shall be upon equal terms. The tests must be easy enough 
for the schools which are large and strong: those which are neither 
may rightfully object to tests which the more conspicuous do not 
have to meet. And, truth to tell, it sometimes develops that the 
size of a schoolhouse and the claims of trustees and teachers are not 
always conclusive of the character of the school. 

Any who are unwilling to use the examinations can be accommo- 
dated by foregoing the appropriations, but the duty which the State 
Education Department owes to the common interests and to all of 
the people of the State will require that even in such case the De- 
partment officers shall ascertain the facts in the best way open to 
them, and afiFord information to any who may be interested. 

But the requirement that all schools expecting to share in the 
appropriations must use the examinations was accompanied by 
several other modifications of the rules, which have long been under 
consideration and are decisively in the direction of simplicity and 
relaxation. If each school sharing in the State funds must be ex- 



10 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

amined, each school doing so must feel the examinations much less 
than heretofore. 

It was enacted that the examinations should not be mandatory 
in any school except in the last two years of the course ; that success 
in passing the State examinations shall not be necessary for the 
promotion of pupils from grade to grade in or for the graduation 
of pupils from schools that prefer to determine such advancements 
by their own local standards ; and that the principal of a school may, 
for physical or mental reasons satisfactory to himself, but to be 
reported to the State Department, excuse a pupil from taking any 
examination. 

It was definitely announced that, apart from the schools showing 
the Department what their children can do in an examination, from 
assuring some definite preparation for admission to the normal 
schools and the training classes, and to colleges and professional 
examinations, and from protecting the standards and certificates 
which the State guarantees, the legal power shall be reserved to a 
community to indulge in just as much " freedom " as it enjoys, and 
have just as poor schools as self-satisfied theorists are able to make 
that community content with. They can even do that and be law 
honest, but let no one think that it carries moral right. No Amer- 
ican community has moral right to any but the best schools it can 
have. 

The educational authorities of the State of New York are agreed 
in declaring their unqualified belief in the necessity of well-defined 
and not too complex courses of work in the secondary schools, in 
some exact measuring of the results of instruction, and in the 
pedagogical value of examinations covering the work done, and set 
by others than the instructors, provided such examinations are rep- 
resentative of the best teaching and freely responsive to educational 
progress. 

The whole world is relative. The highest competency for one 
task is marked incompetency for another. This is so, even though 
the tasks are both educational. It is no reflection upon persons 
for whom I have the highest personal and official respect to say 
that our academic examinations ought to be prepared, or at least 
approved, by men and women who may not be disposed to accept 
employment in a State Department ; who are doing, or are in every- 
day association with, the best teaching, and who have outlook, 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS II 

energy and discrimination equal to the highest intellectual and 
educational demands of the foremost State of the Union. 

In passing from the old way of preparing examinations, let us 
not be unjust to the people who have heretofore done the work. 
It has been encompassed by many troubles. It is easy enough for 
a teacher to think that he could make a better examination paper 
than another does. It is easy enough to think one question should 
have been omitted and another admitted. It is easy enough for 
teachers to differ about the values of answers. Teachers get their 
•recreation out of such differences. It remains to be seen whether 
the examinations will be prepared better hereafter than heretofore. 
And while we are finding out let us be considerate of the men and 
women who have been doing it very conscientiously and very satis- 
factorily in the years that are gone. 

We are now going to see if we can not do much better through 
a New York State Examinations Board, for which the Board of 
Regents provided at the June meeting, in the following language : 

" This board shall consist of twenty persons — the Commissioner 
of Education, the three Assistant Commissioners, and the Chief of 
the Examinations Division shall be ex ofRciis members, and the 
Commissioner of Education shall be chairman. Fifteen other mem- 
bers shall be appointed by the Board of Regents, ordinarily at the 
time of the University Convocation, five of whom shall represent 
the colleges and universities, five the high schools and academies, 
and five the city superintendents. Only such persons as are en- 
gaged in teaching or in supervision in this State shall be members 
of the board. The appointive members shall serve for five years 
but the first appointees for each group shall serve for one, two, 
three, four and five years, as designated by the Board of Regents." 

" The functions of the Examinations Board shall be to appoint, 
with the approval of the Commissioner of Education, committees 
to prepare question papers for State examinations, and to advise 
with the Commissioner in respect to the form and contents of sylla- 
buses covering the subjects of study in the elementary and secondary 
schools." 

" This board shall serve without compensation, but the ordinary 
expenses incident to attendance upon meetings called by the Com- 
missioner of Education shall be paid by the State." 

" The committees appointed by the State Examinations Board to 
prepare question papers shall consist of three persons each. One 



12 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

of each committee shall be an officer of the Education Department; 
the other two members, for preacademic subjects shall be principals 
of elementary schools, and for academic subjects a college teacher 
and a secondary school teacher. Each teacher shall serve for one 
year and shall receive from the State the necessary expenses in 
attending meetings of his committee in each year and an annual 
honorarium as follows : on preacademic subjects, English, Latin, 
Greek, history with civics and economics, mathematics, biologic 
science, and commercial subjects, $50; on German, French, Spanish 
and drawing, $40; on physics, chemistry and physical geography, 
$30." 

Yesterday the Board of Regents appointed the first State Exam- 
inations Board as follows : 

Colleges 

President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, to serve 

5 years 
President Rush Rhees of the University of Rochester, to serve 

4 years 

Chancellor James R. Day of Syracuse University, to serve 3 years 
President David W. Hearn of the College of St Francis Xavier, to 

serve 2 years 
President A. V. V. Raymond of Union University, to serve i year 

Secondary schools 

Associate City Superintendent Edward L. Stevens, in charge of 
high schools, New Ybrk City, to serve 5 years 

Principal Walter B. Gunnison, Erasmus Hall High School, Brook- 
lyn, to serve 4 years 

Principal Frank H. Rollins, Stuyvesant High School, Manhattan, 
to serve 3 years 

Principal Frank D. Boynton, Ithaca High School, Ithaca, to serve 
2 years 

Principal L. F. Hodge, Franklin Academy, Malone, to serve i year 

Elementary schools 

Superintendent William Henry Maxwell, New York City, to serve 

5 years 

Superintendent Henry P. Emerson, Buffalo, to serve 4 years 
Superintendent A. B, Blodgett, Syracuse, to serve 3 years 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 1 3 

Superintendent Charles E. Gorton, Yonkers, to serve 2 years 
Superintendent Richard A. Searing, North Tonawanda, to serve 
I year 

Since initiating this action the great city of New York, where the 
examinations have never been used because the high schools are 
new and the superintendent and other officials have never been 
satisfied with the method of preparing the examination papers, has 
determined to come into the examinations system. We are glad of it 
for we need the aid of the men and women who are at the head of 
the school system in that great city in giving trend to the examina- 
tions and uplift and energy to all of the educational activities of the 
State. And they need us. It begins to look as though we are going 
to have an educational oneness beyond our highest expectations. If 
it be so we shall gain educational power beyond our fondest dreams. 

When argument in this matter is about over and the attempt 
to organize an opposing propaganda has failed, the broad allegation 
is made that unification in this State has been accompanied by 
narrowness, autocracy, bureaucracy, inconsistency, and some other 
possible ailments. The charge comes on schedule time. It is the 
stock argument of the man in education whose ideas or ambitions 
do not prevail. It can not often be noticed, generally 
because it is not worth while, and particularly because a 
State administration which refuses to be insipid and is something 
more than polite, one which takes the initiative and resists attack, 
is held, for that very reason, to furnish added proof of its selfish 
arrogancy and its insane purpose to overthrow all educational 
freedom. 

As between initiating movements which the few will call over- 
reaching, and the insipidity which kills all energy and the nerve- 
lessness which destroys all opportunity, the present administration 
will elect the former. And just now I, for one and for once, welcome 
the charge that has been made because it provides a substantial 
reason for pointing to steps in the direction of democracy, local 
educational freedom, and liberalized State policies, which have been 
taken in our State affairs since the reorganization of the State 
educational administration : 

We have absolutely withdrawn all State directions about, or re- 
sponsibility for, examinations in the elementary schools. 



14 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

We have given complete responsibility for admission to the sec- 
ondary schools to the local authorities. 

We are excluding mere academic work from the normal schools 
and giving it over to local high schools and academies. 

We have been making the elementary syllabus less directory, less 
minute in its prescriptions, and less difficult in accomplishment. 

We have given over the whole foundation of teachers certificates 
to the local academic schools. 

- We have commenced to give all college graduates, even though 
they have no teaching experience, teachers certificates without ex- 
amination. 

We are now excusing all high schools from requiring their pupils 
to take any examination whatever before the pupils are half way 
through the high school course ; we are leaving it to local principals 
to say whether any pupil of any age is unfit to take an examination, 
for physical or mental reasons ; we are leaving the standards of pro- 
motion in and graduation from all academic schools to the local 
authorities, so far as they wish it so ; arid if there are any people in 
New York who possess a school which they think ought not to have 
any exact standards or respond to any known tests, and if they will 
relinquish their claim upon the State's moneys, we will have to let 
them go their own sweet way until their experiences bring them to 
their senses. 

We are now turning over the whole matter of giving trend and 
setting limitations to the work of the schools, and of determining 
the examinations to be held in the schools, to leading teachers of the 
State, in the State Examinations Board. 

Instructions have been given to Department officials and employees 
to travel no more than is required by the clear demands of the 
service. They are not desired to be present at the occasional but 
not unusual functions of a school, for it ought not to be assumed 
that such functions can not easily occur without representation from 
the Department. 

The Department officials have likewise been directed never to 
meddle with school elections or with the settlement of contested 
questions in local assemblages beyond declaring the terms of the 
school law and the manifest interests of education in the State. 
They have had the same directions concerning the elections and poli- 
cies of the voluntary associations ; they are not desired to do more 
in these associations than keep themselves well advised, give such 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS 15 

information as may be desired, and engage reasonably in the open 
and public discussion of questions of general educational concern. 

We have demanded that all political or partizan hands shall be 
taken off the Department and off the schools, and that unselfish 
friends of the schools and particularly the officers and teachers of 
the schools shall be unhampered in their free opportunity to com- 
pound their experiences and their opinions and give trend and 
buoyancy to the educational activities of each city or district. 

No step has been taken which can fairly be held to disclose a 
thought of being exclusive, dictatorial, improperly ambitious, or 
which points to a purpose to develop the mechanical side of mere ad- 
ministration, the vicious power of officialism. There is nothing that 
we so much want as that every city and school district in the State 
may be able and disposed to develop the fullest measure of educa- 
tional capacity and independence. There is nothing to which we are, 
and I am, so much opposed as Department policies which will repress 
or retard such development. No one knows better than I that the 
glory of New York education is to be assured through the inde- 
pendent manliness and womanliness of the teachers in the schools 
and through the strength of the separate schools. 

But there is another side to it. So complex and involved is the 
work of the modern schools that many of the people — the un- 
professional people, at least — are often unable to discriminate be- 
tween good schools and poor ones. They commonly think they have 
excellent schools when they often have very poor ones. Something 
worse than that is often true, and particularly true of secondary 
schools. School boards and teachers are often unable to put any 
fair estimate upon the excellence of their own schools, and they 
sometmies block the eft'orts of their more intelligent constituents 
who know that the schools are not as good as they ought to be and 
are anxious to make them better. There is no block to the advance 
of a school so effective as that which is not infrequently interposed 
by dull or conceited officers and teachers of the school. The State 
Department owes something to the people of a city or school district, 
as well as something to the officers and teachers, and there is an 
administration here which does not intend to let many communities 
be beguiled into thinking that they have the very best schools when 
in fact they have very poor schools, without having something to 
say about it. And we must have something to say about it, even 
though some officers and teachers may be troubled by what we say. 



l6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Let us be understood in so important a matter. There is no one 
in the State educational administration, I am sure, who would not 
be ashamed of any policy or any attitude of the State which will 
not make a good teacher feel stronger and more independent in his 
school room, and which will not make every city and school district 
feel that it has an educational autonomy of its own, and an educa-. 
tional salvation of its own to work out. There is no one here who 
would not give every help to every teacher who is capable of being 
helped. There is- no one here who would not stand by and protect 
every teacher, no matter how high or how humble, who is unjustly 
opposed by the world, flesh, and devil factors in our democratic 
civilization. But we are opposed to narrowness and conceit. We 
are for the people, and the children, and the schools, as well as 
for the teachers. We can not protect one against himself when he 
is justly criticized or opposed. We are to Help the teacher if he will 
be helped, and we are to help the schools whether or no, peacefully 
if we can, and through a contest if we must. We must give the 
best teaching and real progress their utmost opportunity to influence 
the educational career of the State. 

All that we have done is in the direction of democracy in learning 
and the same treatment for all by the State. We will be patient, 
even slow. We will hear everybody to the utmost limit of time 
and strength. But we assert that there are established values and 
recognized standards in education ; and that even a State may have 
come to know something of them, and "may therefore exercise the 
right to apply them to all the secondary schools which it encourages 
with unparalleled liberality, without being justly charged with sub- 
verting the cherished liberties of the people. After hearing every one 
with all patience ; after free discussions in the associations and in the 
press ; with every disposition to wait reasonably for the consolidation 
of opinion ; with entire confidence that there is no likelihood of 
serious divergence in our final judgments upon important matters, 
and refusing to spend much time over little matters, the administra- 
tion will take the responsibility which the law arid the logic of the 
situation place upon it. And one man with a sane proposition, or 
one young girl school teacher with a just cause, shall have more 
weight here than forty men with foibles who have conceived the 
notion that coercion may be the product of combination. 



ACADEMIC EXAMINATIONS AND ACADEMIC FUNDS I7 

For myself, returning to the subject and coming to a conclusion, 
I take the responsibility of saying that the secondary schools of 
New York have multiplied very rapidly. Some have been so much 
stimulated and have grown so rapidly that they are weak. More 
than half of them are without college graduates as principals. The 
colleges must do more for us. The boards of education must be 
more discriminating. The teachers themselves must realize that 
preparation for the secondary schools must be stronger. It is hard 
to say this but we must say it if we would mend it. Many of these 
schools are below the grade. It is vital that all be brought up to 
standard. It can be done. A school, particularly a high school, 
does not have to be a big one in order to be a good one. 

If all of our middle schools can now be made thoroughly good, 
if we can make sure that they are bemg taught by liberally educated 
teachers, and that the course really prepares for college or for the 
higher grades of work, we shall have at once given uplift to both 
the colleges and the elementary school system. We have the instru- 
ments, the Second Assistant Commissioner in the Department and 
the men and women upon the field ; we have the money, both cen- 
trally and generally. We can do this, and we are going to do it. 
We ask the help of every one of you. We will give you our help. 
We will not be overbearing or inconsiderate. We will be kindly 
but we shall be firm. We will not in any case humiliate you before 
your people unless your own obstinacy and their high interests make 
it necessary. In any case we will try to do our duty and we con- 
fidently rely upon all honest and intelligent friends of the schools to 
help us. We have no purpose and no ambitions but to make an edu- 
cational administration that shall be worthy of and acceptable to the 
Empire State. // it is in us to do that, zve iviU not he turned aside 
from doing it. 

If we can uniformly grade up these secondary schools from Olean 
to Oyster Bay, and if we can in the next year or two establish super- 
vision in the farming regions that is reasonably equivalent to that 
which is now enjoyed in the cities and larger villages, we shall have 
an educational system that will be worthy of having its chief seats in 
a four million dollar State Educational Building. We have some- 
thing to do beyond securing the appropriations for the finest educa- 
tion building in the world. We are to occupy such a building 
worthily. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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